08 - Third Class of Hearers
THIRD CLASS OF HEARERS.
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” Matthew 22:37.
“ Full seldom doth a man repent, or use Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch Of blood and custom wholly out of him, And make it clean, and plant himself afresh.”
Tennyson.
“ All virtue and goodness tend to make men powerful in this world; but they who aim at the power have not the virtue. Again, virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasures; but they who cultivate it for the pleasure-sake are selfish, not religious, and will never have the pleasure, because they never can have the virtue.”
J. H. Newman.
THIRD CLASS OF HEARERS.
’’ And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them!’
Here, again, the seed is the same as that which has been scattered upon the path and upon the stony places. This is a part of the same field, but the soil is not tramped, and no rocks are there. Yet when the good grain comes up, noxious weeds are growing as thickly as the grain. The soil was fertile, and the ploughing had been deep and thorough, but the old roots had not been removed, hence they grew up rapidly with the good seed and choked it They drew the strength from the soil, and shaded the good grain from the sun. In the first case the seed did not have any life in the soil. In the second it grew for a short time, then died. Here it retains the name to live, but brings no fruit to perfection. The seed is received into rich soil, Is covered, and puts forth a good growth, and finding no rocks, it roots deeply. Yet, after a few weeks, if you will walk along the hardened path from which the grain has all been stolen, you will see occasional barren spots, with only the dead stalks remainine to mark the rocky place; and here and there, also, you will notice large patches of grain mingled with thorns, cockle, mustard, or whatever may be the besetting thorn, or weed, of that particular region. The hearer of this class is not stupid, nor hardened as in the first class, nor one of mere feeling, as in the second class. In the first, there was no growing life. In the second, growth near the surface (both above and below), no high reaching fruits above, because there was no deeply-rooted life below. In the third we find the roots striking deeply into fertile soil and a rapid growth upward, but thorns are growing thickly with the grain The birds could not steal the seed, for It was received into the soil and covered. The sun could not wither it, for the roots found no rock.
Why, then, has no fruit come to perfection? The word has fallen upon lives thoroughly ploughed, no rocks are there, and no paths are yet worn across the heart. They keep the word through all trials and difficulties, but they keep it with an increasing growth of weeds. When the heart was broken up, the old thorn-roots were not killed, and now they are growing more rapidly than the good grain.
It is another illustration of a heart trying to serve both God and mammon, trying to be both religious and worldly, with the hope of getting the best out of both, and thus failing to get the good out of either. The heart’s powers are summoned in so many directions, and spread over so many conflicting interests, that there is not strength in any one spot to bring fruit to perfection. The capability of every soil is fixed. It can furnish just so much food for the life growing from it. If all that life be of good seed, and the soil be properly prepared, an abundant harvest will be produced. Every weed or thorn requires food for its growth, and takes away just that much of nourishment from the good grain. Every life is capable, with proper preparation, of bringing forth an abundant harvest of good and holy fruits. But if bad seed gets in and mingles its growth with that which is good, all the good and true will be weakened, and much care is needed that it be not entirely destroyed.
Many a man struggles through all his adult life to get rid of thorns whose seed was sown in his childhood. It is not enough simply to prevent evil seeds falling within your own or your child’s life. The field that is carefully fenced and unceasingly guarded will yet grow full of the rankest weeds and thorns, unless thoroughly cultivated and sown with good seed. If good seed is not sown with careful, continued cultivation in every young heart, evil will soon be seen there in vigorous growth. The fate of the seed depends upon the condition of the soil. If properly prepared, all evil seeds and roots removed, and only good seed allowed to grow, an abundant harvest of fullest value will be gathered. The Masters interpretation of this verse is: ’’He also that received seed among the thorns, is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.”
St. Luke 8:14: says, ’’And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and pleasires of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection!’
“Are choked. As if smothered by the deadly gases that deepen sleep and stop the life. Gradually these evil weeds crowd out the good seed, robbing it of air and light. Evil never succeeds in conquering life by a sudden assault, but always gradually, and usually without being noticed.
First dulling the senses, then smothering the life. The cares and riches and pleasures of this life, in contrast with care for heavenly things; striving for worldly success as contrasted with striving for eternal life. The cares that threaten, and those that flatter; the poverty that oppresses, and the riches that unduly elate. The two extremes are touched in order to cover all the wide interval between them. This bringing of the seed of truth to a perfect harvest is everyone’s business, and the rich are no more exempt from its duties and dangers than the poor. The poor man’s toil and fear of days when work cannot be found; the struggle against poverty, or the appearance of need; the wife’s unremitting household cares, and anxious fears for children growing daily into greater dangers; the unrelaxing, burdensome effort to give the appearance of greater wealth, are as dangerously deceitful as the rich man’s care and anxiety.
Yet the hard pressure of poverty is not more dangerous to spiritual life than the flattery of heartless parasites, or the false trust the rich man is ever tempted to put in the power of his wealth, or the luxuries and pleasures which riches too often pour in upon the soul to enfeeble and destroy it. These and other cares of this life weaken and choke the growth of the Christ-life in many a fertile heart. They exhaust the heart’s best affections and overshadow the good seed with a rank, poisonous growth. They are robbers, for there are robbers everywhere on earth, and the bad will steal from the good, and might will trample down right wherever opportunity is found. The commonest tramp of an evil care, or passion, or pleasure, is often permitted to get into the most secret chambers of our lives to steal away our most sacred treasures, and murder our most holy affections. And how easily and continually do we allow all manner of trifling annoyances and anxieties to commit petty larceny on our christian graces. The commonest household cares are sometimes allowed so to engross us that the good seed is crowded out of our lives. Every species of thorn-roots, all forms of inordinate love of things good in themselves, every wrong use of even right things, every variety of intemperance, all are ready with open hand to choke the life out of the good seed in our hearts.
All these things, cares, riches and pleasures, are entirely innocent in themselves, but they become enemies of all true life when they take the place of better things.
We all have “ cares of this life,” and it would be a sad thing for our best life if we were without them; but is there no danger of having our life so absorbed in these cares that we have no room for anything better? When your work is greater than yourself, you are doomed. “What great things he has accomplished! “ Wonders of achievement! But what of himself? Is his whole life expressed in these works? They will soon die. Has any man a right so to absorb himself in the cares of this life as to have no time for discharging his special obligations to God?
“DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES.”
Wealth wields In all human society an enormous power for good or evil. Under the control of a lowly Christian heart, riches may be a blessing of rarest quality; but under the guidance of selfish ambition, they are sure to prove a curse even to their possessor. In itself wealth is a blessing to be received with deep thankfulness, for in its proper use God is glorified and the world made better; the deceitfulness of riches Is a curse to rich and poor alike. The poor man may be as miserly with his penny as the rich man with his dollar. Avarice may be the thorn-root in the poor as in the rich, and it will bring forth as evil a harvest in the one as In the other.
Riches promise much of comfort, ease and power; but these do not come without an accompaniment of larger responsibilities and greater dangers, and very frequently the promise Is altogether deceptive.
How often the appearances deceive one as to the reality! The rich fool in the parable rejoiced in the accumulation of goods for many years, his wealth was the whole of his life, its acquisition and its care absorbed him; but the command of Jehovah, “this night they require of thee thy soul,” showed how deceptive his wealth had been. The getting of wealth often becomes a moral disease, corrupting infinitely more valuable things in the life. With all their power to bless, riches are as likely to curse.
“They that are minded to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction and perdition.” Their minds absorbed in getting money, they lose sight of higher values, and often altogether lose the ability to secure anything but earthly values. Instead of ease and quietness, how often wealth breeds avarice and unholy ambitions working by unholy methods. The excessive haste to be rich leads to methods in business which rapidly destroy permanent moral wealth in order to increase temporary material riches.
Riches are thorns when they rob us of simplicity. Many a man, becoming suddenly rich, has lost his greatest charm of character, and won only the hollow flattery of those who secretly smile at the assumption of the man they pretend to respect.
Riches are ever a temptation to prodigality, luxury, and fuller service of mammon.
Drawn out of the sight of the woes and needs of others, there is continual danger of a rapid development of gross selfishness, and a loss of sympathy with the poor and the weak. Many have inherited great possessions, only to be cursed with poverty of heart.
Yet no one is more deserving of honor than the rich man who has kept himself unspotted from the stains of undue haste and doubtful methods in acquiring, and from pride and selfishness in possessing.
He is worthy of all respect who can receive unharmed the false homage and vile flattery so generally accorded to money.
One of the humblest Christians I have ever known was a man accounted rich. His memory is blessed. Those who knew him best remember and love him for his goodness, not his wealth. The world is full of examples where wealth has proved a blessed minister to the christian life.
Thus while riches are often thorns lacerating human hearts, they may be good seed, producing a hundred fold in the heart of him who possesses, and in the lives of those whom he blesses. But not only are those who become rich in danger of losing their simplicity, but there is even greater danger among those who remain poor. How often the sight of wealth breeds envy, jealousy, and painful discontent. All these are thorns, and of the most dangerous kind. To the rich and to the poor, riches are dangerous chiefly in their deceitfulness, promising so much more than they can give We give up simplicity because they promise greater comfort in luxury, and greater power in display. And how frequently our hearts are deceived by the promise that as soon as we are rich we will do great good with our money, and thus are tempted to such absorbing haste to be rich that we lose the very capability to fulfill the promise. Generous giving as we are receiving is the only sure way of giving with God’s blessing; it may be the only way to avoid dying ’* wickedly rich.”
Riches are thorns when they steal our love from Christ. In days when we had but little, our heart’s affections poured in concentrated stream to Christ. For Him we lived. In His presence w^e thought, and loved, and worked. Riches came and gave us other thoughts and aims. We felt the possession of a new power, and with this Increase of Influence, our pride grew. We seldom stopped to think how temporary that power was. The love of self began to crowd out the love of Christ. That which lifted us heavenward gave place gradually to that which absorbed us in things that soon must die. Deceived by this new power, we no longer felt the need of divine power. Cheated by the glitter of this new idol, we lost our devotion to God. The sensuous choked out the spiritual, until the heart’s fertility was all exhausted to support a growth of weeds that shall at last prevent any of the truth coming to perfection.
Riches are thorns when they lead to pride. Counting our money as part of ourselves, we receive the respect paid to our dollars as if it were reverence paid to our character. A true man will receive respect and honor, whether he be rich or poor. A true man will render respect to nobleness of character wherever he find it, whether amid riches or poverty. It is not wealth that wins for you the companionship and confidence of honest men. The man you may call friend is the one who admires and honors your truthfulness, your uprightness, your christian strength of character. Lose your wealth, and he will still respect and help you, if you still prove yourself a man. Yet how many are proud less of what they are than of what they have. The eager rush for wealth would lead one to suppose that it constituted the very highest aim of life. With a vast number everything is sacrificed for money. The best years of life are given to its acquisition. Character is too often put in jeopardy by doubtful ventures. Opportunity of self-culture in what is highest and best is neglected for closer pursuit of riches. By the eagerness of older gold-seekers youth is tempted to turn aside from truth and the slower methods of honest accumulation, to whatever will most quickly fill the coffers. Wealth may be honestly gathered and righteously enjoyed, and the truest Christian may reap largely of this world’s harvest, and by every acquisition illustrate pure christian principle; but he must be ever mindful of the command that while he is “diligent in business,” he must also be ’’ fervent in spirit,” with Godly service.
’’Pleasures of this life!’ Here all are alike, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, for these are the common weeds. They ruin multitudes where riches ruin scores. Do you remember that young man so active in things good and holy, now so useless to his Master? You know the cause of his failure. He received the word, and it grew rapidly for a time, promising a large harvest. But his Christianity stood in the way of his pleasures, so he crowded out the good seed with a growth of evil weeds. Sinful pleasures kill more souls, and mar the beauty of more christian lives, than all other thorns combined.
Sometimes people are foolish enough to attempt to stifle sorrow by the “pleasures of this life,” forgetting that at the same time they may be stifling a nobler life. How much better to purify sorrow with fervent trust in God, making^ our very affliction “ work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
There is none too much pleasure in this life, but there is a higher use of life than pleasure-seeking,* a use that has peace and pleasure in its very nature. Yet how many men and women come gradually to know no higher end of life than “to enjoy themselves,” meaning to enjoy everything but themselves. Do they never look up from their self-indulgence with a wish for something richer and. nobler? Can they be content to live so valueless a life? All true pleasures have their proper place In the christian life, but out of their own place they are in the way of better things. With the mere pleasure-seeker, inclination controls duty, hence such a man never knows the highest pleasure of christian labor — duty performed for the honor of Christ and the good of other souls.
“LUST OF OTHER THINGS.”
Consuming love for any other thing will have the same effect upon the good seed that the “cares of the world” and the “ deceitfulness of riches” have. It will not permit the fruit to come to perfection. Such unhallowed love is the root of envy and jealousy. It hears with sorrow of another’s prosperity and success, and never wishes good to another without 2. proviso, or a protest of the heart.
Political ambition, as too generally exhibited, has a place under this head.
Politics may be, and ought to be, honorable. The politician whose aim is ever to lift his country to its highest possible life, to seek out the needs and possibilities of man’s nature and interpret them in laws for his help, deserves high honor. In such labor he is a true minister of God. But when he is a mere seeker of place and individual profit, he is a thorn of the very worst kind. Christianity is a much needed ingredient in our present politics. The trouble with this third class of hearers is not only in the preparation of the soil, but also in the later cultivation. The weeds not only exhaust the soil of its fertility, but grow up and become a screen between the good seed and the sun.
What a false view of the Sun of Righteousness we often get by looking through the shadows of our own weed-grown lives! And sometimes these evil weeds of our hearts grow so thickly and so large that they entirely exclude from our lives the great ’’light of the world.” Their beginnings are almost imperceptible, but their growth is rapid and their fruit deadly.
Either we must destroy the weeds, or the weeds will ruin us. In both Peter and Judas there were many thorn-roots; one destroyed them, the other was destroyed by them.
While the good seed is getting a fair start, a wise farmer will go over his field with care to destroy all the weeds and thorns likely to hinder the growth of the good grain. So will a wise hearer of the word watch against the evil weeds and thorns that spring up in our lives so easily and so rapidly. As we approach from barrenness to the full harvest, we notice that the causes of failure get nearer and nearer to the heart, and are more and more subtle in their character. In the first class, the causes of failure were entirely outward — feet and birds. In the second, both outward and inward — sun and rock. Here the causes are entirely inward — cares, deceitfulness, pleasures.
Outward opposition is overcome, but inward temptation kills them. The wrong and danger come from allowing these weeds to grow in the heart as if they were of as good quality as the true seed, as if mammon were as good as God. The only proper place for thorns is as a protecting hedge around the field, and the only proper place for cares is on the borders of life as ministers of protection to the more valuable things within. When you remove a thorn or weed, be sure to sow in its place some good seed.
If a large weed in the field is pulled up, it leaves a bare spot, but with loosened soil.
If good grain be immediately scattered, a good growth will be produced. If the spot be left to itself, it will either become hard, so that no seed can take root, or evil seeds floating in the air will take possession. Be careful, Christian, how you cultivate your. heart’s soil and the divine seed which the husbandman has planted there, lest when he gathers the completed harvest of your earthly life, it be for him only a measure of weeds, a crown of thorns. But who is free from thorns? Emphatically, no one. But the deeper question is, what is your attitude towards them?
One of neglect, one of favor, or one of deadly hostility? ’’ Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.” The fundamental weakness of this class of hearers is that they allow good and evil seeds an equal place in their lives, and thus they are divided against themselves. Their whole life is a conflict. The two crops are struggling for possession of the life, and the end is almost certain to be the death of the good, for the good requires careful cultivation, while the evil grows without any care.